a/long prairie lines

The prairie long-poem has, for many decades, survived at the nexus of poetic tradition of the Canadian prairies. Including works from some of the region’s finest long poets, such as Jon Whyte, Aritha van Herk, and David Arnason, these epic poems take readers on an historic tour of the prairies, through drought and the Depression, from doorsteps to deathbeds.

This anthology is the first to bring together the region's most remarkable examples of this genre; in the process, it revives many long poems which were out of print. As narrative, as documentary, as imaginative landscaping, these poems collectively impart a long-range vision of prairie space, from the earliest pioneers of this form to contemporary poets delineating the postmodernist scene in the west.